NVIDIA GPUs to Accelerate Microsoft Azure

SANTA CLARA, CA--(Marketwired - Sep 29, 2015) - NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) today announced that Microsoft will offer NVIDIA^® GPU-enabled professional graphics applications and accelerated computing capabilities to customers worldwide through its cloud platform, Microsoft Azure.

Deploying the latest version of NVIDIA GRID™ in its new N-Series virtual machine offering, Azure is the first cloud computing platform to provide NVIDIA GRID 2.0 virtualized graphics for enterprise customers.

For the first time, businesses will have the ability to deploy NVIDIA Quadro^®-grade professional graphics applications and accelerated computing on-premises, in the cloud through Azure, or via a hybrid of the two using both Windows and Linux virtual machines. Azure will also offer customers supercomputing-class performance, with the addition of the NVIDIA Tesla^® Accelerated Computing Platform's flagship Tesla K80 GPU accelerators, for the most computationally demanding data center and high performance computing (HPC) applications.

"Our vision is to deliver accelerated graphics and high performance computing to any connected device, regardless of location," said Jen-Hsun Huang, co-founder and CEO of NVIDIA. "We are excited to collaborate with Microsoft Azure to give engineers, designers, content creators, researchers and other professionals the ability to visualize complex, data-intensive designs accurately from anywhere."

"As a leader in advanced visualization, NVIDIA GPUs were a clear choice for our new N-Series compute family," said Jason Zander, corporate vice president at Microsoft Azure. "NVIDIA and Microsoft have a long history of enabling industry-wide innovation and we look forward to working with them to bring this revolutionary cloud experience to our customers."

Unprecedented Virtualized Graphics Performance
With NVIDIA GRID, enterprises can deliver graphics-intensive applications from companies such as Autodesk, Esri and others from the cloud to their users. Announced last month, NVIDIA GRID 2.0 provides the NVIDIA Quadro GPU driver support, features and performance that graphics-intensive applications require, as well as other enhancements including double the application performance of the previous generation of GRID GPUs and Linux OS support.

Supercomputing in the Cloud
The Tesla Accelerated Computing Platform is designed from the ground up for power-efficient, HPC, computational science, supercomputing, data analytics and deep learning applications.

Powering some of the world's highest performance supercomputers, the Tesla platform delivers dramatically higher performance and energy efficiency than a CPU-only approach and unprecedented application throughput in the data center. 

By deploying the Tesla K80 GPU accelerator in its N-Series virtual machines, Azure dramatically expands access to supercomputing-class performance, enabling enterprises worldwide to accelerate their most demanding workloads, without requiring them to invest in, build and maintain dedicated computing resources.

To Keep Current on NVIDIA GRID:

• Follow NVIDIA GRID on LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, the NVIDIA Blog and NVIDIA GRID Forums.
  
  

About NVIDIA
Since 1993, NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) has pioneered the art and science of visual computing. The company's technologies are transforming a world of displays into a world of interactive discovery -- for everyone from gamers to scientists, and consumers to enterprise customers. More information at http://nvidianews.nvidia.com/ and http://blogs.nvidia.com/.

Certain statements in this press release including, but not limited to, statements as to: the benefits, features and impact of NVIDIA GRID 2.0 and the Tesla Accelerated Computing Platform are forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause results to be materially different than expectations. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include: global economic conditions; our reliance on third parties to manufacture, assemble, package and test our products; the impact of technological development and competition; development of new products and technologies or enhancements to our existing product and technologies; market acceptance of our products or our partners' products; design, manufacturing or software defects; changes in consumer preferences or demands; changes in industry standards and interfaces; unexpected loss of performance of our products or technologies when integrated into systems; as well as other factors detailed from time to time in the reports NVIDIA files with the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, including its Form 10-Q for the fiscal period ended July 26, 2015. Copies of reports filed with the SEC are posted on the company's website and are available from NVIDIA without charge. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and speak only as of the date hereof, and, except as required by law, NVIDIA disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements to reflect future events or circumstances.

© 2015 NVIDIA Corporation. All rights reserved. NVIDIA, the NVIDIA logo, Quadro, Tesla, and NVIDIA GRID are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated. Features, pricing, availability and specifications are subject to change without notice.